Edward Everett
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PROFESSOR EDWARD EVERETT “NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Prof. Edward Everett HDT WHAT? INDEX PROFESSOR EDWARD EVERETT PROFESSOR EDWARD EVERETT 1794 April 11, Friday: Edward Everett was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts (now a Boston suburb) to the Reverend Oliver Everett and Lucy Hill Everett. NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT Prof. Edward Everett “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX PROFESSOR EDWARD EVERETT PROFESSOR EDWARD EVERETT 1815 The North American Review was started in Boston under the editorship of William Tudor and would print his “Theology of the Hindoos as Taught by Ram Mohan Roy” as well as Theophilus Parson’s “Manners and Customs of India.” In 1817 it would pass into the control of a club of Boston gentlemen, who would make Jared Sparks chief editor, then Edward Tyrrell Channing, then in 1819 Edward Everett would assume the post. NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW MASTER INDEX DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD. Prof. Edward Everett “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX PROFESSOR EDWARD EVERETT PROFESSOR EDWARD EVERETT 1817 Edward Everett was the first American to receive the PhD of a German university. This was Göttingen, at which Alexander von Humboldt had studied. Karl Theodor Christian Friedrich Follen was a primary organizer of the 1st Wartburgfest at the Schloss Wartburg near Eisenach, Germany. He did not himself attend the student festival, but was the author of political essays, poems, and patriotic songs espousing violence –up to and including tyrannicide– for the preservation of our freedoms. LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Prof. Edward Everett HDT WHAT? INDEX PROFESSOR EDWARD EVERETT PROFESSOR EDWARD EVERETT HDT WHAT? INDEX PROFESSOR EDWARD EVERETT PROFESSOR EDWARD EVERETT 1819 Adam Gurowski was expelled from the gymnasium of Kalisz, Poland for revolutionary demonstration (he would, at various German universities, continue his studies, being at one point a student of philosophy under G.W.F. Hegel; at some point he would lose an eye, presumably as the unintended but not to be unexpected result of a student saber duel of the sort then prevalent). At about this period a Germanization of Boston intellectual culture would be beginning, with the return from study at German universities of George Ticknor1 and Edward Everett. CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE 1. Both Waldo Emerson and Henry Thoreau would have classes under Professor Ticknor. HDT WHAT? INDEX PROFESSOR EDWARD EVERETT PROFESSOR EDWARD EVERETT 1821 Since Waldo Emerson began reading Alexander von Humboldt, and referring to him in his JOURNAL, at this point, it seems likely that he had been told of this explorer and author by his professor Edward Everett while at Harvard College. Emerson would come to own many of Humboldt’s books and it is likely that it was in these volumes that Henry Thoreau first encountered the explorer (he would by 1853 have studied Humboldt’s major works). Publication, in this year, by the firm of W. Allason etc., in London, of a new edition of the dozen volumes of Edward Gibbon’s THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE (this is the edition that HDT WHAT? INDEX PROFESSOR EDWARD EVERETT PROFESSOR EDWARD EVERETT would find its way into the personal library of Emerson). GIBBON, DECLINE & FALL I GIBBON, DECLINE & FALL II GIBBON, DECLINE & FALL III GIBBON, DECLINE & FALL IV GIBBON, DECLINE & FALL V GIBBON, DECLINE & FALL VI GIBBON, DECLINE & FALL VII GIBBON, DECLINE & FALL VIII GIBBON, DECLINE & FALL IX GIBBON, DECLINE & FALL X GIBBON, DECLINE & FALL XI GIBBON, DECLINE & FALL XII At the end of the journal entries for 1820 and 1821, Emerson listed his recent readings in Oriental materials: “Cudworth (containing many quotations from the Neo-Platonists); Zendavesta (apud Gibbon).” http://www.sacred-texts.com/zor/ ZOROASTER HDT WHAT? INDEX PROFESSOR EDWARD EVERETT PROFESSOR EDWARD EVERETT As he completed his senior year, Waldo wrote a Bowdoin Prize essay “The Present State of Ethical Philosophy.” From this year into 1825, having acquired the status of college graduate, he would be teaching school. CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT Prof. Edward Everett “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX PROFESSOR EDWARD EVERETT PROFESSOR EDWARD EVERETT 1822 August: The initial edition of an English translation of Professor Philip Karl Buttmann’s GRIECHISCHE SCHUL- GRAMMATIK, titled GREEK GRAMMAR FOR THE USE OF SCHOOLS, FROM THE GERMAN OF PHILIP BUTTMANN (Boston: O. Everett, translated by Edward Everett of Cambridge, Massachusetts).2 THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Prof. Edward Everett 2. During this year and the following one Professor Buttmann was issuing his ÜBER DIE ALTEN NAMEN VON OSROËNE UND EDESSA, his ÜBER DIE KOTYTTIA UND DIE BAPTAE, and his VON DEN ALEUADEN. HDT WHAT? INDEX PROFESSOR EDWARD EVERETT PROFESSOR EDWARD EVERETT 1823 January: Although, before this date, Alexander von Humboldt was certainly known within scientific, political, and literary circles in the USA, for reviews of his work had been appearing in British magazines from at least 1810 and many of these, no doubt, were seen by American eyes, he seems not to have come into his own as a personage in the popular press until his COSMOS began appearing in English translation in 1845. An American who had followed the Edinburgh Review or the Quarterly Review (London) could have had an understanding of the nature of Humboldt’s writings and scientific theories without having glimpsed the volumes. Laura Dassow Walls has, however, been able to locate only one major article about Humboldt in the pre-COSMOS years in America, and it was an omnibus review of Humboldt’s works by Edward Everett in his North American Review of this date. In his review he took the tone of an educator introducing the American public NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW MASTER INDEX to an important but hitherto little-known Continental writer. He acknowledged the unavailability of the volumes of Messrs. de Humboldt and Bonpland in America, “and few persons, who have not had occasion HDT WHAT? INDEX PROFESSOR EDWARD EVERETT PROFESSOR EDWARD EVERETT particularly to inform themselves, are acquainted with the precise state of a series of works, not yet completed, which constitutes already an era in American history, natural and civil.” Works “so important to America” deserved “to be known and prized in this country”; accordingly, he offered an account of Humboldt’s travels and an enumeration of the principle works published to that date. Though billed as a review of the two latest volumes in the series covering the American explorations, VII and VIII, Everett apologized after twenty-five pages for not having left himself room to do so and instead offered his readership a “specimen, instructive as well as amusing, of their contents.” Subsequently, in the years from 1845 through 1860, it would have been possible for an American to know who Humboldt was and what he stood for through reviews, accounts, gossip, biographies and memorials appearing not only in the North American Review and the New Englander but also such venues as the Methodist Quarterly and Godey’s Lady’s Book. WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF Prof. Edward Everett “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX PROFESSOR EDWARD EVERETT PROFESSOR EDWARD EVERETT 1824 Professor Philip Karl Buttmann was made a knight of the Prussian Red Eagle of the 3d class. Republication in London of Edward Everett’s English translation of Professor Buttmann’s GRIECHISCHE SCHUL-GRAMMATIK, 3 titled GREEK GRAMMAR FOR THE USE OF SCHOOLS, FROM THE GERMAN OF PHILIP BUTTMANN. Samuel Gridley Howe graduated from Harvard Medical School and sailed to participate for six years in the Greek revolution, first as a soldier, then as a surgeon, then as a participant in the postwar reconstruction. Professors George Ticknor, Edward Everett, and George Bancroft, as high-minded academic emissaries from the backwaters in America, went off to Europe to witness real cultural currents. These three Harvard men (Ticknor the professor of belles lettres; Everett the professor of classics, Bancroft the tutor) would later become important in Massachusetts politics. While in Europe the three scholars would come belatedly in contact with the writings left behind by Herr Professor Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich von Schelling, as well as with the contemporary writings of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Contact with German metaphysicians would reinforce the conservatism of Ticknor and Everett while developing in Bancroft what has been referred to as “democratic ideals.” Once safely back in Cambridge, the three would serve as catalysts for the new view of the world. Ticknor would advocate a really higher education, such as transforming Harvard into a university by broadening its curriculum and testing and grading students rather than tolerating advancement through mere seniority. The Reverend William Ellery Channing would also be being challenged by these three visitors to real culture, from the 1830s on, to formulate his new Unitarianism. 3. During this year Professor Buttmann was issuing his ERKLÄRUNG DER GRIECHISCHEN BEISCHRIFT AUF EINEM ÄGYPTISCHEN PAPYRUS. In this year he suffered his initial attack of apoplexy. HDT WHAT? INDEX PROFESSOR EDWARD EVERETT PROFESSOR EDWARD EVERETT December 22, Wednesday: Edward Everett orated at Plymouth, Massachusetts. This would be published by Cummings, Hilliard & Company at 134 Washington Street in Boston and we infer that this publication likely is the source for a declamation that 13-year-old David Henry Thoreau would perform at the Concord Academy in 1830.